Quick, name the most popular pastime in the Mac community! If you said "Wintel Bashing," that's actually ranked number two-- plus, we tend to think of it more as a full-fledged sport than just a pastime. No, the number one hobby among Mac fanatics is actually rumormongering about upcoming hardware. As far as after-hours activities go, it's got it all-- the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the high-speed chase, the heady "fat bits" examination of supposedly stolen marketing graphics to see if there's any telltale Photoshop evidence, etc. There's just nothing more fun than speculating about that next killer product that will put you even further in debt.

Case in point: everybody seems to have a theory on the next iMac. We've heard all kinds of stuff from various sources (covering a wide spectrum of believability). For instance, we've heard from what we consider to be pretty reliable sources that iMacs will gain the super-screaming Rage 128 graphics chip very soon. Other likely enhancements are a faster processor (say, 300+ MHz) and maybe an 8GB hard drive. We also have to consider it likely that Apple will throw in at least a single FireWire port in addition to USB, given their plans for Global FireWire Domination; that would allow consumers to hook up their digital camcorders and edit their video right on their iMacs, presumably with Apple's own Final Cut Pro software due out next month or so. And at some point we figure DVD will make an appearance in the iMac, seeing as that's another "cool" consumer technology.

To us, those all sound like reasonable improvements to expect, and Apple wouldn't necessarily have to raise the iMac's price very much to incorporate all these nifty new features over time. Interestingly, NoBeige received info from an anonymous reader who concurs with most of the feature set mentioned above-- and yet the rumor itself just sounds fake. Perhaps it's because it claims that the new iMac is code-named "Eight Ball" and is all black with a blue LED power button. Is it as nutty as the recent rumors about color-changing iMacs? Or sparkly iMacs? Probably not, but personally, we just don't see the translucent-white-and-single-color design going away anytime soon.